The footprints by the door had faded, with a little dust settling over them.
At least two hours had passed.
Soft music drifted from inside. He poked his head in and cautiously looked around. A harp was playing on its own on the floor, accompanied by the snores of a three-headed dog sleeping soundly nearby.
The trapdoor on its back stood open, revealing a path leading underground.
Aside from the two of them, there were no other traces of magical energy.
He drew his sword and went inside.
At the trapdoor, he didn't jump down right away. Instead, he bent over to look. Even without light, his vision remained unobstructed. Vines, and deep blue, tentacle-like stems—it was Devil's Snare.
There weren't any other plants beneath the Devil's Snare, either.
Was this simply... a buffer?
He jumped down without a worry. The Devil's Snare immediately wrapped around him.
He swept his hand and cast the Igni Sign. Sparks flew, and the vines quickly recoiled, dropping Harry onto the ground less than a meter below.
Farther ahead, a dense cluster of tiny traces of magical energy fluttered and buzzed through the air.
Harry could see them clearly: keys, lots of them. Beside the locked door leading to the next room lay a broomstick. It was obvious how he was supposed to get through this challenge.
He was good at flying.
But he wasn't in the mood for a flying game right now.
He walked up to the door and waved his wand. "Alohomora!"
Nothing happened. The door had been protected by a countercharm.
"Portaberto!" Harry cast another spell.
The lock exploded with a bang, sending out clouds of black smoke. Harry grabbed the door and pulled, but it still wouldn't budge.
They'd really covered every countercharm.
Harry clicked his tongue and put his hand against the door. "Aard!"
The Sign struck. Several cracks appeared, and Harry kicked the door. The boards flew apart. Wasn't this much faster than riding a broom?
The third room was extraordinarily grand.
A giant chessboard stood in the middle, its pieces almost as tall as he was.
Harry felt a headache coming on. He was great at card games, but chess was a bit beyond him. He walked around the board and tried pulling open the door, but it wouldn't budge either.
He planned to use the same trick as before, but as soon as he cast the Aard Sign, the magic in the room surged violently, as if in defiance of the rules.
Crack, crack—
The chess pieces came to life. They lurched forward, raising the swords and spears in their hands as they charged at Harry.
Looks like he'd have to fight!
Harry raised his hand and cast a Quen shield over himself. He lunged, rolled, and circled around to the other side, swinging his silver sword to slice off the bishop's head.
These were just lifeless, magically animated constructs.
A bit of a nuisance, but nothing serious.
In less than ten minutes, the floor was covered with broken chess pieces.
Harry hadn't received so much as a scratch, and he'd barely broken a sweat.
The magic in the room continued to surge. The fragments of the chess pieces wriggled and came back together. They had a self-repair mechanism and would return to how Harry had first found them within half an hour at most.
He blasted open the door and entered the next room.
A foul stench hit him. A troll's corpse lay in the middle of the room. Harry went over to inspect it. The body was still warm; it had been dead for less than an hour.
There were no wounds at all.
Traces of the Killing Curse...
He cut off some of the troll's hair and, ignoring the Sorting Hat's complaints, stuffed it inside. Then he hurried to the next room.
A table stood in the room, with seven oddly shaped bottles of Potions arranged on it.
Powerful magic also lingered throughout the room. The instant he stepped fully inside, it was triggered. Black flames engulfed the walls and both doors.
It wasn't Fiendfyre.
There was none of its thick, cursed aura, but the flames were scorching, their contained heat astonishingly intense. He couldn't simply throw up a shield and charge through.
Harry walked over to the table. Along with the Potions, there was a sheet of paper covered in messy handwriting and a logic puzzle. It was obviously Snape's work.
He loved using this sort of challenge: something a fool couldn't solve, but that still made even a clever person work for it. Then he could watch them flounder and coldly sneer, "A brain like a troll's."
Witchers most often used Signs and swords to solve problems.
That didn't mean they lacked brains. It was simply more convenient this way. Sometimes having a brain didn't mean everyone else did, too.
He quickly picked out the correct Potion. After drinking it, he passed through the flames and entered the next room—the last one.
The furnishings here were even simpler.
The room was empty, with only an ornate full-length mirror. His target stood in front of it, gazing at it greedily, a blissful blush spreading across his face.
He was lost in the dreamland of his own imagination.
"Idiot! Someone's come in!" a hoarse voice snapped, sounding rather frantic.
Quirrell spun around, but saw nothing.
"The Invisibility Cloak! It's Potter!" the hoarse voice shrieked again.
Quirrell waved his wand. "Windblast!"
Harry willingly pulled off the cloak and stuffed it back into the hat.
Quirrell drawled, "Potter, I thought it would be someone else, like Snape. He's always getting in my way."
"Fancy meeting you again." Harry nodded at him. "You seem to have recovered well. How's your kidney?"
Quirrell's expression immediately darkened. "Such a sharp tongue. I keep running into you in all the places I shouldn't. Are you Dumbledore's backup plan?"
"A first-year wizard? He thinks so little of me..."
"Maybe I didn't even need to come." Harry shrugged. "Looks like you still haven't found the Sorcerer's Stone. It's been a long time."
"Potter!" Quirrell's hand trembled as he raised his wand. "Perhaps the beating you took that night wasn't enough?"
Harry sneered. "What right does someone I stabbed in the kidney have to say that?"
He was about to cast a spell when the hoarse voice spoke up. "Let me see him."
Quirrell looked terrified. "No, Master, you haven't recovered yet..."
"Quickly," the hoarse voice said again. "I'm not so weak that I can't handle this."
Quirrell shakily raised his hands and unwound the turban that had been wrapped around his head for so long it stank. As it fell to the floor, he turned around.
A completely bald head—the only hairless person among all the wizards Harry had ever seen.
A face grew out of the back of his head. It had no nose, just two narrow slits, and a pair of snake-like eyes. "Potter, we meet at last."
"Voldemort?" Harry tightened his grip on his sword and added another layer to his Quen shield. "You're an ugly sight."
"Now I understand why you could sense where I was. So... you've been here all along."
"Why are you so nervous?" Voldemort hissed with a laugh. "You're the Chosen One, the one who defeated me—the great and exalted Dark Lord."
He paused. "You left me with nothing but a shadow and a wisp of smoke, forcing me to share a body with my servant!"
Harry added mockingly, "And you have to spend every day in that stinking turban. No wonder you don't have a nose."
Quirrell shuddered. Voldemort's face had almost no features, but it still twisted into a vicious snarl. "Potter, we can talk."
"I can see that you have ambition, even if you did end up in Gryffindor. Look at those beautiful eyes of yours. My Nagini has a pair just like them."
"She's my most treasured pet snake."
"We can work together and share the Sorcerer's Stone. It has wondrous powers, and it can even bring the dead back to life. Don't you want to resurrect your parents?"
His words were full of temptation.
"Some people say my eyes look like a cat's. Others say they look like a lion's." Harry answered coldly, "Do you know what cats and lions have in common?"
Voldemort said nothing, narrowing his eyes as he watched him.
"They can both catch snakes," Harry answered his own question.
Voldemort controlled Quirrell's body and walked over to the mirror. "Do you know why Dumbledore left this mirror here?"
Harry said nothing.
Voldemort continued, "It's the Mirror of Erised. It reflects the desires of a person's heart, their most fundamental yearnings."
"Do you know what I see?"
"The Sorcerer's Stone. My body restored, and me once again the all-powerful Dark Lord."
"Don't you want to see what you desire?"
Harry shook his head. "Thanks, but I'm not interested."
Voldemort waved his wand, and the mirror flew in front of Harry. Even though he dodged, it still reflected him.
His reflection remained trapped in the glass. It winked at him, pulled a red stone that didn't belong to him and didn't exist out of its pocket, then put it back.
The phantom in the mirror affected reality.
Harry felt his pocket grow heavy as something weighty dropped inside. There was no doubt—that was the Sorcerer's Stone.
His expression darkened.
Voldemort was overjoyed. "Just as I thought! Dumbledore has fooled me again, but in the end, he was wrong. Hand over the Sorcerer's Stone!"
He waved his wand without even speaking an incantation.
A mass of bluish-black snakes poured out from beneath his robes and surged toward Harry.
Igni!
Harry cast the Sign. Flames surged, swallowing the snakes, and then he waved his wand again. Blue flames billowed up. They weren't much of a threat, but at least... they could obscure the view a little.
The snakes weren't the danger.
The instant Harry moved, a snake in the direction he was running wriggled and transformed into a wall. That path was blocked, so he tried another, shifting his weight—but at the same time—
"Avada Kedavra!"
Voldemort cast the spell, sending the Killing Curse toward the direction Harry was most likely to retreat. There were plenty of dark wizards who could cast the Killing Curse, but the reason Voldemort had become the Dark Lord was that... he could make sure every Killing Curse had the best possible chance of hitting its target.
Harry planted his sword in the ground and pushed himself off it, barely dodging the curse.
He slammed the Aard Sign into the wall.
Magic shattered and scattered through the air.
Fortunately, this wasn't the Forbidden Forest, just a cramped room. Harry dodged left and right, quickly closing in. He swung his sword, about to cut Quirrell in half at the waist.
Whoosh, whoosh—
Two sharp sounds.
Voldemort watched Harry, now within arm's reach, with amusement, pointing his wand at him. "It's useless. I know you use a sword. I've been prepared for it."
"Goodbye, Potter."
"Avada—"
Before he could finish, Harry clenched his other hand into a fist and swung it at Voldemort. "Is that so? Did you think I could use my fists, too?"
Sizzle—
The skin on the back of Voldemort's head crackled harshly, bubbling up like a burn.
Harry's scar began to throb with pain, too.
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